Portland Community College | Portland, Oregon

• Utilize strategies of influence, without formal authority, to increase productivity, completing projects more efficiently within a global business environment.
• Apply influencing skills in building relationships with peers, supervisors, and others to create a mutual advantage and accomplish more in a diverse workplace.

• Apply individual and /or group skill-building activities such as role-plays, case studies, or other exercises geared toward critical analysis of course concepts.
• Use written assignments or oral reports designed to integrate course material into personal experience or experiences of others.
• Complete exams comprising of essay and/or objective questions, or an individual and/or team project or paper requiring integration application, and critical examination of course concepts, issues, and themes.

COMPETENCIES/SKILLS:

• Diagnosing the needs of uncooperative people.
• Creating interpersonal exchanges
• Forming alliances
• Disagreeing without being insubordinate
• Creating win-win results
• Adjusting social style to others
• Planning

CONCEPTS", THEMES & ISSUES:

General Concepts 

• Influence without formal authority
• Mutual respect
• Openness and trust
• Mutual exchange strategies
• Currencies of exchange
• Building relationships
• Power and authority
• The four different social styles

Themes 

• The work environment requires higher levels of initiative", judgment, and self-direction from non-supervisory people.
• Each employee is responsible for department success.

Issues 

• Be willing to settle for partial success initially. 
• Fears prevent people from building alliances and taking initiative.
• To complete their jobs", employees need to influence those they can’t control.
• Not all people can be influenced successfully.